Carnal Innocence

will.”
    “And you tell that Bobby Lee there’s to be no more parking down on Dog Street Road. If the two of you have to get romantic, you’ll do it down in the family room.”
    “Mom….” A slow flush worked its way up her throat to her cheeks.
    “You tell him, or I will.” She kissed Marvella’s pouty lips. “Now, get.”
    “Yes’m.” She smiled at Caroline. “Don’t let her bully you, Miss Waverly. Once she starts, she never stops.”
    “Sassy.” Susie chuckled after the front screen door slammed. “Hard to believe she’s grown up on me.”
    “She’s a lovely girl.”
    “Yes, she is that. Hardheaded and sure of what she wants, though. She’s wanted Bobby Lee Fuller for the best part of two years, so I guess she’ll get him all right.” She gave a wistful smile before she picked up her cooling coffee. “Once I set my sights on Burke, he didn’t have a prayer. She’s the same. Only you worry, because they always seem so much younger than you were at the same age.” She frowned at Caroline’s plate. “You didn’t eat much.”
    “I’m sorry.” With effort, Caroline took another bite. “It all seems so strange—I didn’t even know that girl, but it’s dreadful just thinking about her.” Resigned, she pushed her plate aside. “Susie, I didn’t want to ask too many questions with Marvella here, but do I understand this right? This girl was the third murdered?”
    “Since February,” Susie said with a nod. “They were all three stabbed.”
    “God.”
    “Burke won’t say much, but I know it’s bad, really bad. Some kind of mutilation.” She rose to clear the table. “As a mother—as a woman—it scares me. And I worry about Burke, too. He’s taking this all on himself, like it was his fault somehow. God knows nobody aroundhere was prepared for this kind of thing, but Burke thinks he should have been able to stop it.”
    The way, Susie remembered, he’d thought he should have been able to stop his father from putting a noose around his neck.
    Caroline filled the sink with soapy water. “No suspects?”
    “If so, he’s not saying. With Arnette, it seemed like it had to’ve been a drifter. I mean, when you’ve got eight or nine hundred people in a town, you get so you know damn near everybody. It just didn’t seem possible it could have been one of us. Then when Francie was killed the same way, people began to look around a little. And still, when it came right down to it, none of us wanted to believe it could have been a neighbor, or a friend. But now …”
    “Now you have to look among your own.”
    “We do.” She picked up a tea towel as Caroline began to wash the breakfast dishes. “Though I think it’s more likely we’ve got some psycho living in the swamp, hiding in there.”
    Caroline looked out the window toward the trees. Trees that seemed so much closer to the house than before. “Well, that’s a comfort.”
    “I don’t mean to scare you, but if you’re living out here alone, you need to be careful.”
    Caroline pressed her lips together. “I heard that Tucker Longstreet and Edda Lou had a fight. That she was pressuring him into marriage.”
    “Trying to, more like.” Susie polished a plate clean, then laughed. “Lordy, you don’t know Tucker, or else you wouldn’t have that look on your face. The idea of him killing someone, well, it’s just laughable. First place, it would take too much effort and emotion. Tucker tends to be lacking in both departments.”
    Caroline remembered the look on his face when she’d come across him by the pond. There’d been plenty of emotion then. The dangerous kind. “Still …”
    “I guess Burke’ll have to talk to him,” Susie said. “And that’ll be hard. They’re as close as brothers. We all went to school together,” she continued as she dried andstacked dishes. “Tucker and Dwayne—that’s Tucker’s brother—Burke and me. They were all planters’ sons, though by that time the Truesdale place was already failing, so private school was out of the question for Burke. Dwayne went off to boarding school for awhile, him being the first son and all, but he couldn’t keep out of trouble so the school shipped him on home. There’d been talk of sending Tucker off, too, but then old Beau was so pissed about Dwayne, he kept Tuck home.” She smiled as she examined a glass for spots. “Tuck always said he owed Dwayne big for that one. I guess that’s why he tries to look after him now. He’s